A sheet as it goes to the press

One drawing on three pages: a press sheet stating where the ink runs, where the blade falls and what is worth keeping, with corner marks; the same sheet cropped to the finished page; and a landscape page that states a quarter turn clockwise on an upright sheet.

A page has always had a sheet. It also has the four areas a printer reads: how far the ink runs, where the blade falls, what is worth keeping, and what a reader shows on screen. This page is the same drawing three times over, and what changes is the areas it states.

First the press sheet with its corner marks, ink running past the trim line. Then the same sheet cropped to the finished page, which is what a reader shows. Then a landscape page, made by stating a quarter turn clockwise on an upright sheet, which is how a very wide table gets printed without the sheet changing size.

What this example shows

  • The bleed, trim, useful-content and display areas, stated on one page.
  • Corner marks drawn outside the trim line, in the bleed.
  • A quarter turn declared on the page, rather than the drawing actually turned.

The code, in full

The same document is written twice, once in each language. Both files are shown in full, with the code coloured on the server, and can be copied in one click.

The document itself

The document this example writes, ready to open.

Open the document in English

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First page of A sheet as it goes to the press

What this document weighs

Before 115,238 bytes
Now 45,011 bytes
Saved 60.9 %

Not one mark on the page changed. See every document measured.

Examples near this one

Grey, screen and printing colours

Swatches in each of the three ways to say a colour — a grey as one number, a screen colour as three, a printing colour as four inks — each captioned with the instruction actually written into the file, and one mid-grey said three ways.

Colour the document defines

The same six colours said as bare numbers and then read through the sRGB profile the file carries, plus a ramp from light to dark and a sweep of hues in CIE L*a*b*: colour that still means the same thing on another screen and on a press.

Inks on plates of their own

Two inks the press carries on a plate of their own, each at ten strengths, a piece of work set in both, and the crosses used to line the plates up — drawn in an ink every plate answers to.

Several plates at once, each at a strength of its own

Eight choices of plate among the four usual inks, each with the small program that shows it printed underneath, and two inks the press carries itself used together, every strength of one against every strength of the other.

A chart of colours, and a drawing that names places in it

A chart of house colours the file carries, and a drawing whose sixteen numbers are places in that chart rather than colours. The same drawing is shown twice through two charts: repainting a whole brand is one table, not every drawing.

One hatch, laid down in as many colours as the page asks for

One pattern that states no colour of its own, laid down in five colours and in five strengths of one press ink: the fill says what colour to lay it down in. Beside them, the same hatch made of patterns that carry their own colours, which is one pattern per colour.

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Glossary

CMYK
The four inks a printing press lays down: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. A screen mixes light instead, so a document going to a press states its colours in inks, not in screen colours.